You know, I said, God loves Maggie very much. But he doesn’t give a shit about you. The Dane looked up in surprise. I showed him the gold. I showed him the gun. I kissed his mouth. Please, he said, and it was done.
AT THE SEA
OVER THERE is the child, a red shovel in her hand. Dig, dig! she yells. She’s the only child on the beach still smiling. It’s not hot enough anymore, the wind is sweeping the sand into everyone’s eyes, couples argue about where to eat dinner. You roll onto your stomach and sip rum from a soda can. When your phone rings you don’t answer. If only the child wasn’t there, digging, oblivious, crusted with salt. Where is the mother? You are on vacation, you want to be alone. You put your hand over your eyes.
Later you buy the little girl a grilled cheese and french fries at a bar and grill. You should have made her wash her hands; now there’s sand on the bread. She eats it anyway. You don’t have any dinner, you just drink. You drink and drink and she looks at you because you’re not eating, you’re not talking, you stare at the table or the bottles behind the bar. How old are you now? you ask, and this makes her smile. I’m three! she says, holding up some fingers. She’s a good girl, you tell yourself, staring at her sunburned cheeks; she doesn’t make a mess of the chocolate ice cream the waiter brings her in a plastic dish. You ask for the check.
You carry her on your shoulders because she seems to have lost the white sandals she had on earlier at the beach. She claps her hands in the lobby and a woman turns to look and you shrug because you don’t know what the clapping is about. She does it all the time. Down the hall from your room is an ice machine that she wants to play with so you let her.
Look! she says, pressing the button. Chipped ice shoots out onto the floor.
Yeah, you say, that’s neat.
You let her take a handful of ice back to the room. You have another rum and Coke while she pulls the cover back on the bed and spreads the ice around on the sheets.
Careful, you tell her.
She looks up and smiles. Mama? she says. You shake your head and tell her No, you’ll see Mama later.
The rum, mixed with the cocktails you had at the restaurant, gives you a headache. You lie down next to the child on the bed. She’s stirring the ice with her foot. You turn on the TV but you can’t get the channel you want. Fuck, you say, then to the little girl: Sorry.
When you wake up your hand is curled in the damp spot on the sheets and cartoons are running around on the TV. The phone is ringing. In two hours you have to be at work; the little girl is gone. She’s not in bed, she’s not playing on the floor, she’s nowhere. You get up, look into the bathroom, find her shoes. You answer the phone that is still ringing.
John. Did I wake you?
No, you lie. What?
Are you coming in today?
I told you, yeah, today.
Are you sure?
Well, Lisa, you say, and you know you shouldn’t be on the phone, you should be out looking, trying to figure it out, the little girl, where did she go.
Actually, Lisa, I have to stay one more day.
John, what’s wrong? Lisa whispers. Are you sick? You sound sick. What’s going on?
No, I—just, I’ll call Friday, okay? I’ll call tomorrow.
It’s very hard to say anything else. You’re still drunk. You hang up. You sit for a moment. There’s a rustling under the bed and you shout Hey, hey! You bend down to look and there she is, smiling at you, giggling. You’re angry, then you’re happy, then you’re sad. She crawls onto your lap and pats your cheek and says Oh Daddy, don’t cry.
EVIDENCE
HE STEPS around the body and its shadow of blood. The head, where’s the head? He leans closer: some kind of mashed in. Pulverized. But it’s all here. Kneeling, he sniffs, pokes, prods, guesses, wonders, looks. A bit of brain like putty dried on the oven door. One of the cops whistles. The detective stands. Peeling off gloves, giving orders. Pages of notepads flickering. Making the usual jokes. He turns his back on the other guys, rubs his eyes. Somehow he is expected not to go crazy. Blood even on the flowered wallpaper. He squints. The flowers and the blood compete for white space. He is sure a woman was here. Red prints on the linoleum left by a pair of pumps.
Detective, someone says. He is leaning so close to the wall he can smell the grease and blood breathing from it. Bouquet. He shuts his eyes, thinks of something far away. Fields. Humanless. Green.
Detective?
What? he says.
You better take a look at this.
He opens his eyes. The fields vanish.
After his shift he sits in his car. He’s looking at a house and thinking what kind of person would leave their living room window open so late at night in this crazy neighborhood and then he realizes this is not a house he’s casing, it’s his actual house.
A beautiful woman being dead never surprises him. Murder looks less cheap on a pretty woman: it can look like a million bucks. She could be flung across a bed, hair a flame on the sheets. Curled somewhere, dainty, maybe in the back of a car, blood drawn by the pinch of a knife, or a necklace of bruises high and dark on a slender throat. It never looks like an accident. The eyes are never closed. If she’s beautiful, she sees it coming.
The detective tells his wife these things after dinner. He says it while tapping ash on the tablecloth and gesturing to conjure these women, to show her, see, this one and this one and this one, all beautiful, all dead, but not you, thank God, you were never beautiful.
The wife hugs her elbows across her chest. I want a divorce, she says.
Maybe I’m getting confused, he says. About the women, I mean.
Confused? His wife’s voice rises as he tilts his plate to look beneath it, causing the unfinished steak to slide in its skin of blood.
Okay, okay. I’m sorry. He sets the plate down. The steak rests.
You don’t even know what for, she says, and then she’s gone.
He is called in to a scene where a boy is hanging in his father’s closet next to a rack of pants and a lot of laundry piled on the floor. The detective eases sideways into the closet to get a look at the face that is drifting away from him: ears cheek chin, silk of tie and tongue, and then the wide green eyes. The detective jerks back and says Aw, shit.
What? his partner asks. The detective is pinching the bridge of his nose, hand on one hip, shaking his head.
Oh fuck, you know him?
Sort of, the detective replies. Used to mow my lawn. Justin somebody.
No shit, his partner murmurs. They rummage through dressers, beneath beds, in coat pockets, but everything is missing. No note, no drugs, no foul play. The detective looks so hard his eyes hurt. A photographer comes in and the flashes go off like slaps.
You know it wasn’t my fault, the mother says. The detective scribbles on his notepad and makes a noise that means We’ll see.
The man with the mashed-in head didn’t have a girlfriend. Ex-wife accounted for two hundred miles away. No sisters, no nieces, no internet or credit card or cell phone history of contact with suspicious persons—hookers, drug runners, best friend’s woman. The house is clean of condoms. No history of his knowing anyone who would wear such fancy shoes. Size seven. Too small for a cross-dresser and the only other shoes that made prints are on the dead guy’s feet. Weary blob of blood on the welcome mat and after that, nothing. Leading to nowhere. Would have been blood in the shoes, down the legs, all over her. No sign she ran the shower or even used the sink. No witnesses reporting a woman going inside the house then coming out drenched red. The detective got on his knees near the stove, measuring the prints next to his hand.
Pointy toe. Smooth sole. High heel.
The detective keeps a photo of the dead man’s head; there it is, intact, stuck to a bulletin board. You’re going to die, the detective thinks every time he looks at the ugly happy face. By this time his own house is officially empty of family, as clean as an old crime scene. He watches all the shows with cops in them so he can remember how
to act. He frowns, he drinks coffee, he tells dirty jokes. He strokes the glossy photo and thinks of all the women he has known, all the meat inside a man. How often it is the other way around: the woman in pieces, and every man a murderer.
She’s about the age he guessed—thirty, thirty-five. Young people, unless they are on drugs, don’t have enough rage to do what she did. And the shoes, four inches, the dress, white: he just gets a feeling sometimes. In the guts. Halter strap cutting into her neck as she turns to look at who walked in and then turns again when she sees it’s just him. His badge burns in his jacket pocket. He hitches a hip onto the stool beside her and she concentrates on squeezing a lime into her beer. He looks and looks at her. Big beautiful face, cheekbones, no makeup and she doesn’t need it. She looks back: cutting eyes. Cruel. Capable.
Don’t, she says.
Don’t what?
She leaves the dry lime in a fetal curl on her cocktail napkin.
I’m surprised you haven’t left town, he says.
She rolls her eyes.
The bartender asks him what he wants and he says Martini and when the woman snorts he says No, I mean beer, sorry, did I say martini?
The bartender uncaps the beer on the edge of the bar and the steam that rises from the bottle is like smoke from a lazy fire.
I just want to know one thing, he says, but she gives him nothing, no sign she can even hear him. He reminds himself he’s been here before: Take it slow. Smile, lean in, get cozy. Approximate admiration. A perp leaves a body like that, you better pretend you’re impressed.
Helluva job, he says with a chummy smile. What you did. Really first-rate. Must have been a real asshole for you to do it like that.
Do what, she says.
I know, I know, he says, you have your reasons. But there are simpler ways, right? Why the thing with the head?
Her neck stiffens. Is this some kind of joke?
He shows his palms. Easy, I’m just asking you an honest question.
Jesus, you’re drunk already.
I’m a cop, he whispers.
She smirks. Next you’re gonna tell me I’m under arrest, right?
He imagines cuffing her strong wrists. Steel jewelry jangling against her white skin, chafing the blue veins. The flowered paper, the blood already dry. Flowers used to make him think of perfume. Not anymore. He misses a beat. Comes back.
You didn’t leave a single good print, he says, wagging his finger. But you forgot about the shoes.
What the fuck, she sighs, lips pillowed against the mouth of her beer.
We learn in school, he continues, what marks all the different types of shoes make. I recognized yours right away. Not definitive proof, but definitely incriminating.
She drains her beer, asks for another. He hasn’t tasted his own drink, or if he has, he doesn’t remember. She peels the label from her bottle, the glue and the paper scratched from the glass with her thumb. He imagines her stroking a weapon, though he can’t remember what it was: a bat? A knife? A gun? Nothing was ever found, the case gone cold, freezing. He watches her, hoping she can at least melt the edges off.
I never saw anything quite like it, not from a woman. He rubs his nose, sniffs. I admit, it got to me. Is still getting to me.
So I killed him, huh? she says, and suddenly he’s changing direction, hotshot just like in the movies, keep it cool, you got her where you want her.
I don’t know. You tell me, he says, leaning back on the stool, wiping the bar with his hands, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bartender: all shoulders in a sagging suit. A slice of unshaven chin.
Let me guess, she says, her palm falling hard to the bar. Out of work? Health troubles? Bad luck? Nothing nice happens to you or what?
I’ve seen a lot of bad things, he explains.
Well I’ve seen things too, she says, offended, like he’s trying to keep all of something valuable to himself.
That’s no excuse in the eyes of the law, lady, he says.
She gets off her stool, gathers her purse from the floor. Her heel makes a cracking sound on the tile. He flinches.
I don’t really have time for this, she says.
When she comes out of the ladies’ room he is there; she has to step back to keep from running into him.
I don’t want to fuck you, she says. Get it?
I know, he says humbly.
Then what do you want?
He kneels to grip her skirt. The whiteness of the dress baffles him, saddens him: the man had been splashed all over that kitchen. There should be a trace, some mark on her, a scar, and yet: this dress. Its whiteness. The woman’s strong legs.
Do you think I feel sorry for you? she says, not unkind, looking down.
Why can’t you? he says.
Why should I?
The skirt wrinkles, folds in his hand.
How did you get it out? he says. All that blood.
She shrieks, disgusted, as their hands fumble in the field of her skirt, hers trying to pry him off, his trying to hold on. Thinking of the man’s head, his own head, what he’ll never get back.
Please, he begs, please, I’ve seen enough, just do it to me too.
VIRAL
I’M IN the car waiting for my boyfriend to kill her. It’s 2:00 a.m. and Veronica’s neighborhood is completely quiet. No one will see him, with his stupid hoodie and the black hair I dyed last weekend falling into his face, scrambling through the hedges to her front door. No one sees me, slouched in the backseat, the sleeve of my jacket tucked deep inside my mouth.
Six weeks ago Blake asked Veronica for her phone number. Blake is a terrible student, a total slut, and definitely not her type. No boy is really Veronica’s type. But he didn’t get it; he was tall and zitless and looked like the vampire in the Twilight movies and had always got any girl he wanted. So when she just stood there, polite but aloof, he didn’t know how to play it. Hey, he said, half smiling. We should hang out sometime.
Veronica shook her head. No, sorry, I don’t think so, she said, touching his shoulder before moving past him to the curb, where her dad was waiting in their silver Mercedes. Suddenly he looked ridiculous, even to me, standing there with his mouth open in his tight pre-ripped jeans and fake leather jacket. All around there was a rustle of laughter, like candy bar wrappers being crinkled beneath a desk. Fucking bitch, he muttered, lighting a cigarette and throwing the match into the grass before walking away.
The first time I saw her do it we were eleven. I was at her house for a sleepover, taking a bath, washing my hair with her fancy shampoo in the deep tub. She was the only girl I knew who had her own bathroom. I dipped my hair beneath the water to rinse, pretending I was a mermaid with the longest hair in the kingdom. When I sat up I heard something through the door, a sound I recognized; at a certain age you know every kind of creak a mattress can make when a body is on it. I got out of the water very carefully, dripping on the thick white rug, listening. The sound was rhythmic, soft; I pulled a towel from the bar and wrapped it around my chest, creeping over the rug to the door. I turned the knob slow, so it wouldn’t make any noise. Veronica was on the bed, facedown, the head of a Cabbage Patch doll between her legs. Her nightgown was pulled up to her waist and I could see everything: her ass clenching, hips pumping, knees driving into the blanket. Heat swallowed my crotch. It went on for a minute, two minutes, before she went still, gasping into her pillow. I stepped back. As I was closing the door my hand slipped on the knob and the bolt snapped into place like a shot.
Zee? she called in a bright, breathless voice. Are you ever going to get out of that bath?
Yeah, I called back, equally breathless, pulling on a T-shirt. I’m just getting dressed.
When I came back out she smiled nervously, flushed. We ate ice-cream sandwiches, watched Anne of Green Gables, then went to bed; I slept on the floor. After that we weren’t really friends anymore and I never spent the night at her house again.
He came over the night after she turned him down
. I was wearing a cropped shirt and the same purple lipstick his last girlfriend had worn, but he didn’t say anything about how I looked. He never did. He just sat on my bed playing with his phone for an hour while I watched him.
We could get her back, I said finally.
Yeah? he said, looking at me for the first time that night. How?
I gave him a bottle of vodka my brother kept in the freezer and told him my plan. He kept the vodka between his legs and when I wanted a sip I would put my mouth on the bottle like I was going to give him a blow job and he said Go on, you alkie, drink it. I did. His thighs were cold. I’d never touched his bare legs. He leaned back on his elbows and watched me move the bottle from his lap to my lips to the floor. His eyes were slits, but I could see the blue beneath his lashes, sparkling at me. You really want to? he said. I unzipped his shorts, about to cry. Okay, he said, barely moving his mouth, nodding like he was going to fall asleep, but he didn’t, not until he finished and I was wiping my lips with my wrist.
I sat behind her in homeroom. Veronica, I hissed. Veronica! I waited for her to turn around, to look at me, to smile, but she didn’t. Maybe she hadn’t heard me. I wrote on a piece of paper You’re a bitch and folded the paper until it was a tiny square no bigger than the tip of my finger and when the bell rang and she walked by I flicked it off my desk in her direction. It hit her calf and fell to the floor. I caught her eye and she waved at me, like she would to anyone else, and kept walking.
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